


Painless

by mydeardoctorwatson



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Depression, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Suicidal Thoughts, alternate universe post-reichenbach, not following series three, really i'm just projecting onto Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 12:30:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20582552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeardoctorwatson/pseuds/mydeardoctorwatson
Summary: The pull of his wounds is like the sharp pull of the bow across his violin strings; his injuries playing out an agonising tune. They play on deaf ears and to the silence of the solitary flat.An empty shell, that is what he is. Drained of all energy, all purpose. It is as if, when John left, he took all of Sherlock’s life force with him, and left behind only the wounds he inflicted on a deserving body, leaving the rest of him carved out, empty, as heartless as John decried him.





	Painless

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling a certain kinda way and this happened. I don't even know if it makes sense, this is basically a way of just getting some emotions off my chest.  
Please heed the tags, this isn't the happiest story ever posted.

It is so quiet, in the aftermath, and the air around him seems weighted, following the crash. The sharp and slicing sound of the glass breaking transmits itself into physical pain as Sherlock bends down to gather up the shards and nicks his fingers at the pieces, which bite at him like small, irritating dogs. He brings his injured hand up and studies it for a moment, almost entranced as he watches the blood start to gently, shyly, trickle out of the wounds, slowly gaining confidence when he cannot resist squeezing his fingers together, clenching his hand into a fist, increasing the tempo until the blood flows with ease, the dam broken.

He wonders if he should just leave the glass shards there. No one else will step on them, and he will know to avoid them as he walks past. They are physical reminder of all that is afflicting him, of all that is wrong ever since a world and its feelings that he had so viciously decided he did not care about turned on him and sent him its deadliest weapon. And now, his defences are gone, destroyed, just like the glass that had slipped from his shaky fingers; it would make a fitting monument to what has become of him, a physical reminder of his failures.

He does not know how long he crouches down, hand clenched into a fist streaming with blood which travels down his wrist, dipping into the indentations where bone sits underneath flesh and muscle.

_You’ll regret that when you try and next play the violin. _

The voice comes unbidden, and Sherlock shakes his head to try and dislodge it. It _always _comes, at times like this, and these past few weeks, its has been there constantly, because _of course _it is there; the aftershocks of a weapon can be felt, the injuries left behind. It is just like the marks which mar his back, gouged into his flesh. He never answers to it, he doesn’t have the words. The words he had spoken, weeks ago, to John, when he had tried to explain, were not enough, and so Sherlock does not see how anything he could say could ever be enough. Not to the universe’s best weapon.

He counts the pulsing thrum of the blood oozing from his fingers, counting as it matches each second that passes by, using it as a macabre clock. When his pulse quickens, so does the ‘clock’, and to Sherlock it seems appropriate, that it should go on ever faster, for time has flown by him whilst John has been gone, and the blood is, like the glass, a physical representation of how time has gone on without him, of how John has gone on without him.

Eventually he wrenches his hand open, and his pale skin has been made bloody, so bright and red that the blood almost looks artificial. Drops fall to the floor, and Sherlock leaves them to stain the glass shards, two monuments to the man he once was, but no longer can be.

He has suffered too many wounds, and now that the weapon is gone, he no longer has the healer.

He no longer has John. 

* * *

It is later, and Sherlock is struggling to open his pill bottle with only one hand. He has the bottle wedged in between his underarm and torso and is attempting to twist off the cap, but at this angle, it is tricky.

_Come on genius, surely you must be able to figure it out. _

Sherlock grits his teeth and his injured hand twitches. He has hastily covered his shredded fingers in adhesive plasters, but he has not bothered to clean the wounds, to make sure there is no glass embedded within them. It does not matter.

He does not really know why he is bothering to try and take his prescription painkillers, administered by one of Mycroft’s condescending and odious doctors, if only that it is a marker of time passing, of another day going by. Something to do. Besides, with no cocaine, and no impetus to leave the flat at this moment in time to obtain some, they will at least help to numb his <strike>mind </strike>pain, if anything.

He feels suddenly so very weary, so much so his knees buckle, and he sits down on the closed toilet seat, jostling his wounds as he does. The pull of his wounds is like the sharp pull of the bow across his violin strings; his injuries playing out an agonising tune. They play on deaf ears and to the silence of the solitary flat.

An empty shell, that is what he is. Drained of all energy, all purpose. It is as if, when John left, he took all of Sherlock’s life force with him, and left behind only the wounds he inflicted on a deserving body, leaving the rest of him carved out, empty, as heartless as John decried him.

Why should he bother taking these _stupid _pills prescribed to him by Mycroft’s _stupid _doctor when his wounds do not matter, when he does not matter. He lets the pill bottle fall to the floor, and it hits the tiles with a small thud. Sherlock certainly isn’t going to be the one to suddenly decide he matters. The one man who could make such a judgement is gone, has already passed his final sentence, is happy in suburbia with his expecting wife and their life which holds promise and happiness.

Sherlock’s life is empty, as hollow as he himself if.

He wonders how long this charade will go on. 

* * *

He pads almost silently, a ghost in his own home, from the bathroom to the living room. Each step is marred by the memories of what had once filled this space, a life now gone, a life he gave up when he jumped off that roof. They play out in a mind now a stranger to its host, Sherlock’s mind palace a sorry affair of data that now has no bearing, no meaning, for Sherlock has no meaning.

These are things that happened to another man, in another time. The person he is now does not deserve such things; he knows that. They are lost to memory, to the oblivion that the passing of time brings. It is an oblivion Sherlock has contemplated for a long time. To be gone, forgotten, even if one is not completely. he thinks record of him will be retained, that in the future some historian might find it fascinating to study the life of the once prolific London consulting detective, but they will never really know him, their account will be made from conclusions from only the evidence left behind. Sherlock Holmes will never be fully known, because only John knows the real Sherlock, and he turned his back on him. Sherlock Holmes is not worth anything. That is a part of him he will take to his grave.

That grave calls to him, and it looks suspiciously like his leather couch. As he enters the living room, his eyes are magnetically drawn to it, its soft upholstery calling out in the cold and uninhabited room. He could simply lie down and remain there until he is gone. It might not take that long. Dehydration. Infection, from not taking care of his wounds properly. Mycroft does not know he has scared off the doctor sent to check up on him regularly. Mycroft thinks he knows everything, but he cannot look past his self- assigned omniscience to see the truth of Sherlock’s existence. He has always deemed Sherlock the slow one, the stupid one, but really, Sherlock thinks, Mycroft’s omniscience is stupid.

He could lay there forever. It would be suitable.

He feels a little like a dusty and forgotten old artefact, standing forgotten in the very back of the museum. Once, he was well-known, a ‘celebrity’, as people liked to put it, instantly conferring a value on his life with that one word. But value can be taken away like a rug being pulled out from under your feet, Sherlock has learnt, and before long, you realise no one cares, that the universe holds no promises of every remembering you. Sherlock has never been one to care what others think about him, but it is not the slurring of his name following his fake suicide that hurts, nor is it that the moment he explained, in basic terms, how he had so effectively faked his own death to the British press, the public seemed to lose interest; they could never, public opinion was always a blunted sword taking little effect and causing no lasting damage. No, what hurts the most is that Sherlock now sincerely understands that there is no value upon his life because the one point of contact with the rest of humanity he had, the man he could use to tap into what was appropriate, to lead life as an actual _person, _is gone, by his own choice. In one cutting argument he tore away Sherlock’s value and chose a life with someone who could actually make him happy. And Sherlock has been taught that happiness is the life goal, the truest success. He could provide that for John, once upon a time, but John had eased down Sherlock’s defences, exposed him to emotions and _feelings _he had suppressed since childhood, and obviously Sherlock had failed to really grip what to do with them because he had apparently hurt John and now the man has banished him from his life.

Two years of protecting John was obviously not enough. Sherlock had thought it might be, to show John how much he cares for the man, but anger had been all John thought, and Sherlock had simply taken each and every evaluation of his character which John had doled him before telling, in clear terms, to _get the hell out of his house. _

_Uncaring bastard._

_How could you do it?_

_I really thought Sherlock, truly, that you might have worked out what good and bad is, I thought at least I’d given you that, but no, apparently not. No one normal would do what you did. _

The curious and almost pitying look of John’s partner as John has physically shoved him away from the doorstep remains etched into his memory, no matter how many time he has tried to delete it. She fit John, Sherlock could see that, her reaction making utter sense in the face of John’s anger and upset. Sherlock is sure his own face has most likely been expressionless. Also fitting, apparently.

It is not John’s fault, he had tried to fix Sherlock, but it was never going to work, even if John was the best weapon the universe could create to tear Sherlock’s walls down. There is something wrong with him, he is sure, an oddity, and he knows, with finality that comes as relief, that this is something that cannot be fixed. Or rather, there is a way to fix it, a way that Sherlock is sure will come as a relief to John, a return to the normal balance of nature, one he had thought had already been maintained, when he believed Sherlock to be dead. Sherlock will happily oblige.

He prevaricates by the sofa for a while, knowing that if he throws himself down upon it now, that will be it, he will never get up again. Something trickles through the gap in his certainty, a small bit of doubt, a remaining piece of _something _from when John had tried to teach him how to be human. Of course he has rallied against all that was expected of him in the past, by other people who thought it was their business to involve themselves in his life, but there is no use in fighting now, for he would not be fighting against the prejudices of the ignorant. No, he would be fighting against the wisdom of a man who was once Sherlock’s conductor of light. Sherlock truly believes John can cast his light on all Sherlock was missing, all the spare parts somehow not programmed into him, and now, without that guide, Sherlock has lost his way, and he will never find his way back for John, because John is gone. Although….He looks across to his desk, the thick coating of dust which has settled over it, and to his mobile phone.

His phone has lain abandoned for god knows how long, but if someone had wanted to get in touch with him, they would have found a way by now. Many a time has Lestrade forced his way into the flat, in the past, and Sherlock knows Mycroft will stop at nothing to stick his beak-like nose in. Like actors in a play, the people in his life have exited, as if directed, to give Sherlock his moment for that final soliloquy, the closing speech. John had always said he was a good actor; maybe this shall be his final performance, then, something which actually comes from a place within him, the most moving and effective finale he can give, played to absolutely no one but the John within his head.

_Stop being so dramatic, you prick._

“Sorry John.” Sherlock mutters, and his fingers falter for only a second before he picks up his phone, pressing the on button. He has to know, has to shake that small nagging doubt before he goes ahead with his performance. Strange, he thinks, as the bland light of the phone screen illuminates his face, it makes him feel much better to pretend this is all an act. To be the pretending, uncaring thing John thought he was in life in death as well…. well, it certainly makes it easier.

His stomach lurches when the main screen of his phone pops open, and he fumbles to click first on the email icon, then on the messenger icon, and finally on the phone icon. He lets the phone slip from his fingers and fall to the floor once his doubt has been alleviated, once that last tendril of something which so bitterly feels like hope is washed away. John has not tried to contact him once in the weeks since Sherlock last saw him. It is certain then, final, the decision made. His guide is gone. He is no longer needed, and no longer wanted. He has failed in all he has done, failed to understand what it is to be human, seemingly marked since birth to be an outcast. It has always been the same.

“Thank you for trying, John.” He mutters, before he lies down on the sofa, the wounds on his back protesting. Another stupid thing, he scoffs; he cannot understand human nature and yet the physical pain he has gone through has brought him to its lowest depths, to the sheer survival within each and every person. So, only in pain does he understand it, then, this ineffable thin that is _being human,_ how very fitting.

Something else protests as he shifts to be fully lying down, making his head comfortable on a cushion, and he pulls his dressing gown out from under him, realising he must have lain on one of the pockets, and whatever was in there. He pulls out the painkillers. He must have stashed them in his pockets absentmindedly as he, phantom-like, made his way from the bathroom to here.

Sherlock has never believed in coincidence, or signs from nature, obviously, because that would make him an idiot, but the John in his head raises his voice, and it all makes sense to Sherlock that he should find the pill bottle now, at this moment, in this time of decision.

_It would be painless; it says so on the bottle. Doesn’t take you, genius, to figure that one out. _

Sherlock sniggers and nods his head. Painless. Devoid of pain, not suffering, not feeling anything.

It would work out well for everyone, if he decided to take that route now.

“Of course, John.”

He takes the bottle in one hand, his uninjured one, and with his plastered hand unscrews the cap.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Maybe I'll write a follow up chapter sometime, if anyone would like that.


End file.
